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Persuasive Essay On Cheating

Decent Essays

Is it okay to cheat? What does it mean to cheat? Just like everything else in life, the answer to both questions depend on who you ask. If you were to ask a college student what cheating is they would most likely respond with “copying a classmate’s paper”. However, if you were to ask a professor at the same university what cheating was they might respond with “any form of copying another person’s work, ideas, methods, etc. without giving credit”. This leaves the experimenter with a question: why does the same question receive such different answers? These two answers differ because of one idea: rationale. To the student, cheating isn’t as serious of a deal as the professors believe it is. Students most often believe that cheating …show more content…

In other words, the student’s intuition once again falsely convinced them that it would be okay to cheat if someone else was doing it as well. At Randolph-Macon College cheating is not accepted on any level. The Code of Academic Integrity explicitly outlines every possible situation that comes up and explains how and why it is a violation. This relates to Ariely’s concepts because while a student may believe that what they are doing is just a minor offense or not worth disputing about, the code states otherwise. For example, if a student believes that using a translator to help them with their foreign language homework is acceptable, they would be wrong. In addition, students have also read and agreed to the code so there typically isn’t a gray area when incidents happen. The code also states the possible punishments that could be distributed upon violating the code. Finally, the code clearly informs the student what is at stake and should diminish the chances of a cognitive illusion from happening. So far, Ariely’s ideas have only be reference in an educational setting but they can also be related to the business world. Is it okay for an employee to take a pen from the office? How about a pack of printer paper? Or is it okay to just add one more zero to your company’s financial report to show a little more profitability? This idea of cheating carries over into businesses and their employees as well. Most people

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